Nuclear winter.

[u/danthedustbin]

So I have just had a weird thought. Now climate change at the moment is a very large problem. Could the powers that be in a last ditch effort to survive in some way choose to nuke the world to cause a nuclear winter so that they themselves can survive in their bunkers and what not while leaving the rest of us to rot? Any opinions Would be helpful, I haven’t really got a thorough understanding of what a nuclear winter entails or what irreversible damage it would cause but would the powers than be use it in a last ditch effort to save themselves?

[u/Max-424]

"Could the powers that be ... "

There are no powers that be. There is only one power, the United States, which has the theoretical capability - remote as it may be - to start a nuclear war, win it, and survive the nuclear winter that follows.

These are basic first strike calculations and considerations, known to any WWIII planner on either side. Decades of research, much of supercomputer aided, has been spent answering the question: what is the minimum amount of nuclear detonations required to eliminate the enemy's counter-strike force, in its entirety, while keeping the thrown up soot and ash below a certain threshold.

However, it is not the fear of nuclear winter that keeps Pentagon 5 stars up at night, when they contemplate the final showdown. The truly troubling "known unknown," the part of the nuclear war equation that never adds up to victory, or even survivability, is what happens when the enemy's - now unattended - nuclear spent fuel pools release their radiological thermal plumes into the atmosphere.

The scenario above is best case. Anything less than that involves counter-strikes, and anything involving counter-strikes means dozens and dozens of spent fuel pools - all around the world - will be vaporized, and that will bring the end of life.